


Another Day Of This

by agirlnamedtruth



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-18
Updated: 2011-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-26 06:13:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/279636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agirlnamedtruth/pseuds/agirlnamedtruth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>PROMPT: Severus Snape; What he thinks about the mistakes that his students make, the Slytherin house students taking the dark way, and he comparing their mistakes with his own. Extra points if there's a "not everything in Slytherin is bad" feeling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Day Of This

Severus walks through the corridors, robes billowing and stern expression set on his face. First and second years will stop what they’re doing, even if it’s perfectly innocent, out of fear. Hardly anyone older will spare his presence a second thought. He sees older kids making fun of a younger boy, chucking some possession of his between them. The boy is close to tears and it tugs at a deep place inside of him, like it always does when he sees situations like this, different faces each time but they still remind him of his own little humiliations, his unwilling part in their games. He does nothing for the boy, his own problem never made better by meddling teachers, only worse. But he whacks the oldest boy, the most arrogant one, the instigator of all this no doubt, round the back of his head with a book he happens to be carrying. He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t break his stride, he doesn’t look back to see the reaction of either but he knows that in a few minutes the kid’s life will go back to being a living hell. He wondered if any of the ones who played this game knew how much their petty actions could affect the lives of others. It was a self-indulgent thought but one he couldn’t help having. How different would his life have been if he’d been spared all the pain, all the regret.

Draco barges past him, panicked and hyperventilating. He smiles, not out of sadism in this boy’s pain but because it means something. Something he can relate to. Something that he feels every day before he can sleep, something that keeps him going even. It keeps his head above the metaphorical water that threatens to drown him, the fear and the bitterness. It shone out of Draco like a light burning inside him. The boy was out of his depth, having a different sort of game played with him, a cruel game he didn’t understand and it was being played with his life. He was scared of more than Severus though, his fear was more than one layer. Draco was terrified of Voldemort and death, that was true but was the shallower layer. Severus wasn’t scared of death, it wasn’t his life he clung onto. It was what was below that that sparked Severus’ own fire. As he watched Draco run into a bathroom he could see, as plain as day, what he was feeling because he felt it too. It was his goodness eating away at him, projecting itself in the forms of guilt and fear. Fear for his soul. Fear spilling out of both of their souls, struggling to fight the darkness tying to shroud them. Potter rushed past him, his motivation completely different, one of self-righteousness and no doubt ulterior motives. But he cast the perfect manifestation of why he refused to be consumed, why that spark of goodness would never extinguish. He didn’t know Draco’s reasoning but it was enough to know it was there, despite what people thought of him. No one would ever know their true selves; they would only see the worst not the best.


End file.
